How shared endorsements work
To ensure that your recommendations reach the people you care about, Google sometimes displays your reviews, recommendations and other relevant activity throughout its products and services. This sometimes includes shopping contexts, like the Google Play music store, and ads. Your profile name and photo may appear with the recommendation.
For example, if you search for "Italian restaurants," you might see an ad for a nearby restaurant along with your friend's favorable review. Or, in Google Play, you might see that another friend has +1'd a new song or album.
We call these shared endorsements.
Don't worry, your account's privacy settings are not affected. You get to decide whether you want your name and photo included in shared endorsements that appear in ads through the Shared Endorsements setting. And for users under 18, their actions won't appear in Shared Endorsements in ads and certain other contexts.
How to turn on or off shared endorsements on ads:
- Sign into your Google account. If you came to this page while still creating your account, finish that process first, then come back here.
- Go to the Shared Endorsements setting page. If you are not already a Google+ user, you will be asked to upgrade your account.
- To allow people to see your name and photo in shared endorsements appearing in ads, check the box next to "Based upon my activity, Google may show my name and profile photo in shared endorsements that appear in ads." Then, click the "Save" button to save your new setting.
- If you'd like to disable this setting, just uncheck the box and click "Save." Remember, unchecking the box means that Google won't be able to share your recommendations with your friends in some cases where they might otherwise see and benefit from them.